Gonzales Memo Advised Bush How to Avoid War Crimes Charges

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"Those dumb Americans have no idea how we're f*cking up our country, right amigo?"

In the book, the authors use the documents to show that the torture policies enacted by the White House began on Jan. 25, 2002, when then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales advised Bush in a memo to deny al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners protections under the Geneva Conventions.

Gonzales’s memorandum says that by denying Geneva Conventions protections to al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners it “substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act” and “provide a solid defense to any future prosecution.”

Two weeks later, Bush signed an action memorandum dated Feb. 7, 2002, addressed to Vice President Dick Cheney, which denied baseline protections to al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners under the Third Geneva Convention.

That memo, according to a recently released bipartisan report issued by the Senate Armed Services Committee, opened the door to “considering aggressive techniques,” which were then developed with the complicity of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and other senior Bush officials.

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